In 1982, I awoke on Christmas morning to find Santa had blessed me with an
Atari 2600 (or Video Computer System (VCS) as it had been previously known).
I was about ten years old at the time, and knew this gift would make me the
envy of many neighbourhood children, who in the following couple of years would
come over and play until the joystick button had dug creases into our thumbs,
or my mother would come in and yell at us to “go enjoy the weather”. I can’t
guess how many hours I spent in front of that console— probably hundreds— but
upon beginning this research— some twenty years later— I realized I could still
remember every song as I began to re-hear them. Burned into my consciousness,
the songs at the time seemed inconsequential (although I think I can remember
humming the tunes as the games loaded). I had not yet formulated the musical
awareness that I have today, and did not, therefore, realize how odd those bits
of music were. Unlike other games consoles of the era, the Atari VCS was unique
when it came to sound, and, I will argue, helped to create a new musical aesthetic
as a result of its awkward tuning system. The Atari VCS saw limited success
when it was first released, and the first few years of production saw few games
created for the console. In 1980, however, Atari licensed the popular arcade
game Space Invaders, which became a best seller and helped to spur on the sales
of the VCS. Most remarkable, however, was the longevity of the machine. While
today console makers can expect a shelf-life of perhaps two to three years,
the Atari VCS was on store shelves from 1977 until 1989, making it the longest-running
console ever. Eventually, over 25 million homes had owned a VCS, and over 120
million cartridges had been sold.1

The Atari VCS saw limited success when it was first released, and the first
few years of production saw few games created for the console. In 1980, however,
Atari licensed the popular arcade game Space Invaders, which became a best seller
and helped to spur on the sales of the VCS. Most remarkable, however, was the
longevity of the machine. While today console makers can expect a shelf-life
of perhaps two to three years, the Atari VCS was on store shelves from 1977
until 1989, making it the longest-running console ever. Eventually, over 25
million homes had owned a VCS, and over 120 million cartridges had been sold.1

The TIA The majority of 8-bit video games machines (and early arcade and pinball
machines) used what is known as programmable sound generators, or PSG sound,
silicon chips designed for applications which generate sound based on a user’s
specifications. These specifications were usually coded in assembly language,
and early sound programmers and musicians needed to understand the programming
language to engage the chip. This meant that most early games composers were
in fact programmers working on other aspects of a game, or at best, in-house
programmer-musicians who had to work closely with programmers working on other
aspects of the game. PSGs offered little control over the timbre of a sound,
usually limiting sounds to single waveforms without much ability to manipulate
that waveform. Many of these PSGs were created by Texas Instruments or General
Instruments, but some companies, such as Atari and Commodore, designed their
own sound chips to improve sound quality. Early PSGs used what is known as analogue
synthesis, or subtractive synthesis. Subtractive synthesis starts with a wave
form created by an oscillator, and uses a filter to attenuate or subtract specific
frequencies and then passes this through an amplifier to control the envelope
and amplitude of the final resulting sound:

Figure 1: Subtractive synthesis. The sound chip in the VCS was manufactured
specially by Atari, and was known as the TIA chip, and also handled graphics.
The audio portion had just two channels, meaning whatever music and sound effects
were to come out of the machine, could only be heard on two simultaneous voices.
Each channel had a four-bit volume control (sixteen volume options), and a four-bit
waveform control selector, but of the sixteen possible settings, several were
the same or similar to others. Typically, the voice options were two (sort-of)
square waves (one high, one bass), one (sort-of) sine wave, one Oscillator creates
sound wave Filter cuts down or cuts off frequencies. Amplifier controls loudness,
adjusts Resulting sound

1 The sound chip in the VCS was manufactured specially by Atari, and was known
as the TIA chip, and also handled graphics. The audio portion had just two channels,
meaning whatever music and sound effects were to come out of the machine, could
only be heard on two simultaneous voices. Each channel had a four-bit volume
control (sixteen volume options), and a four-bit waveform control selector,
but of the sixteen possible settings, several were the same or similar to others.
Typically, the voice options were two (sort-of) square waves (one high, one
bass), one (sort-of) sine wave, one (sort-of) saw wave, and several noise-based
sound options useful for effects or percussion. The trouble with the tonal sounds,
however, was that each had a different tuning (although two of the square-wave
sounds were almost the same tuning), so the pitch value may be different between
the bass and the lead.

This tuning was down to the TIA’s five-bit frequency divider (capable of dividing
a frequency of 30KHz by 32 values). This frequency controller was incredibly
limited, and used a polynomial counter, also known as a Linear-Feedback Shift
Register (LFSR). LFSRs are type of binary counter that uses a pseudo-random
way of counting, rather than the normal binary incremental/decremental sequences.
The number was divided down from the system clock. Starting with one base tone,
that frequency is then divided between one and 32. To compound the problem,
there were slight variations between NTSC and PAL formats. At times, pitches
were off by as much as fifty cents.2

Tuning sets could be quite variable, then, as some setups would allow for more
bass notes, while others would allow for more treble, and since many sets would
have conflicting tunings between bass and treble, they were for most tonal compositional
purposes, useless. Paul Slocum, creator of an Atari VCS sequencer kit, warns
“Although each set contains notes that are close to being in-tune, you can still
end up with songs that sound pretty bad if you aren't careful. Playing a note
from the set that is a bit sharp simultaneously with another note that is a
bit flat can sound bad.”3 Slocum provides programmers with several somewhat
function setups. The following example gives us five tonal voices from which
to choose our melody or bass. Pitches are given as closest to calculated frequency,
but depending on whether or not the system is NTSC or PAL (North American or
European television broadcasting standards), the actual pitch can range— in
this case, by as much as 29 cents. Recognizing that sounds below about C2 and
above about C7 were not very practical for tonal elements (although they may
be useful for sound effects), we are left with even further limitations (I have
greyed these less useful notes out). The best we can get in terms of a complete
chromatic scale within any one octave is the square wave, which will give us
six out of the twelve notes.

Figure 2: One Tuning System for the Atari VCS.

Bass, Pitfall / Low Bass / Lead / Saw / Square

Note / NTSC / PAL

Slocum (2003) shows how various effects can be accomplished using the limited
technology. To simulate chords, fast arpeggios could be played. Portamento effects
can also be made using a similar technique. Echo effects (see Clown Down Town)
can be created by repeating notes and decreasing volume. Phasing effects can
be simulated by playing simultaneous notes on both channels. “Once you start
playing a simultaneous note on both voices, the phasing will stay the same until
you switch notes. However, I've found that if you set the pitch on one voice
to a random value for a few cycles and then set it back to the correct value,
it will shift the phase” (Slocum 2003). The difficulty in programming tunes
for the Atari VCS meant that there was less use of popular songs than other
consoles had seen (see Collins 2005), although it certainly worked in a few
cases, such as the cover of the title theme for Halloween. The cover version
doesn’t have the key changes of the originals, but it’s not a bad rendition,
given the Atari’s limitations.

METHODS Downloading as many VCS games as I could find, I ended up with 486
files for my StellaX v1.1.3a Atari VCS emulator. Of these files, only 121 had
music or were working, a fact that is notable as many Atari programmers did
not even try to write music for the machines. I eliminated any prototypes and
games categorized as “unbelievably rare”, took out any games that were duplicate
soundtracks (e.g. Summer Games and Winter Games), as well as any that used popular
song, or title themes for their music. Left with eighty games to choose from,
I randomly selected half of these to analyse.

The fact that the tuning system may be different between different voices (there
may be a “G” available in the bass, but only a G# in the treble, for instance),
complicated programming in harmony, and it is little wonder that only seventeen
of the forty songs analysed contained songs with both bass and treble voices.

Minor Seconds and the Atari Tuning

One thing I immediately noticed was the prominence of flat seconds in the songs.
Of the forty games analysed, fourteen of them had the odd characteristic of
containing flat seconds, which at the time was very unusual in Western music.
As Tagg notes, “With the exception of a few rock songs from the early eighties
which sported lyrics expressing alienation, hopelessness and a sense of doom,
no internationally popular music of this century has shown such a leaning toward
(aeolian and phrygian) modes with their downward pulling minor sixths and/or
seconds.”5

It is the minor second which characterizes the phrygian mode, although the
examples for the Atari are not necessarily in any mode or key. Acoustically
speaking, the minor second is considered to have the strongest dissonance in
the Western chromatic scale, and feels particularly unstable in the bass register.
Cooke argues that the minor second represents “unrelieved hopelessness”, “hopeless
anguish” and “despair”, and that

4 Its tension is obviously akin to that of the minor sixth: it is an acute
dissonance in relation to the minor triad, but whereas the sixth is drawn by
semitonal tension down to the dominant, the minor second is drawn by semitonal
tension down to the tonic. This means that whereas the minor sixth is an expression
of anguish in a context of flux, the minor second is an expression of anguish
in a context of finality; in other words, the minor sixth expresses an active
anguish, the minor second a hopeless anguish.6

The phrygian has been called the “austere” or “severe” mode, and is often referred
to by many Westerners as “dark”, “heavy”, “brooding”, “somber”, or “gloomy”.7
William B. Kimmel has shown that phrygian inflections are common to Western
“death” music, specifically as recurring elements in requiems.8 In the civil
war saga Cold Mountain, novelist Charles Frazier describes it as “the frightening
and awful Phrygian mode, and when the girl’s mother heard it she burst into
tears and ran from her chair out into the hall”.9

The prominence of minor seconds in the music of the Atari seems linked more
to the limited tunings available than to any musical affect for the most part.
For instance, if I chose the saw wave sound from the chart above, my bass (lets
say the lower two octaves of the chart) is primarily limited to C, D#/Eb, F,
A, A#/Bb, and B. Not having either a diatonic or chromatic scale to play with,
it is simply statistically more likely that I will end up using a flat second.
Given these notes, of the major keys, I have a choice of six (A, B, C, F, Bb,
and Eb), though two of these will contain flattened seconds. Of the minor keys,
I can use eight (A, A#, B, Bb, C, D#, Eb, and F) but three of these will have
flattened seconds. If I use A# minor then I’m using a phrygian mode, and if
I use A major, I’m into Locrian modal territory, with the flat five.

In the limited tonal language of the Atari, minor seconds often seem to have
the affect of being slightly “off”, rather than signifying any kind of doom
in some of the tracks, although this could be influenced the lack of any modal
or tonal setting in which these minor seconds are found. The games Base Attack,
or Room Doom, for instance, include a minor second as part of their intros,
which are both just quick ascending scales:

Figure 5. Base Attack (Home Vision) unknown year and programmer.

Likewise, it is unclear whether or not Clown Down Town’s echo-plex-like tones
are meant to spell “doom”, though it is unlikely given the setting of having
a clown walking around the city meeting people:

Figure 6. Clown Down Town (unknown)

And my particular favourite, Tapeworm’s hilariously bizarre title theme, which
seems unrelated to the action of the game:

Figure 7. Tapeworm (Spectravision 1982)

Other games seem to use phrygian modal elements for more traditional reasons,
such as to conjure up images of deserts, pyramids and snakes, as in Desert Falcon,
described in the manual as

“A Daring Desert Quest for Treasure! All around you are long stretches of sand,
ancient pyramids baking in the hot dead air, and constant danger. The legends
that brought you here are 30 centuries old. The tales tell of thieves who plundered
the Pharaoh's tomb, loading bags of gold, silver, and precious gems onto their
camels, then making off into the desert. But in the night, horrible desert beasts
pursued the robbers, and the priceless treasure was scattered and lost. Not
even a camel was ever seen again. Now you search for the lost treasure, daring
the beaks and claws of the desert guardians. As you scan the endless sand for
the glitter of jewels, your eye catches sight of gliding shadows. Something's
coming!”

Figure 8. Desert Falcon (Atari 1988, programmer Bob Polaro)

But other games where we would expect this music are absent, such as Tutankhamun,
and Montezuma’s Revenge. It is unclear whether still others, such as the composer
of No Escape! (set in an ancient Greek temple) intended the inclusion of modal
elements to connote ancient times. Likewise, Entombed combines horror with archaeology,
but does not seem to be invoking the flat twos to conjur Arabic imagery, but
rather invoking the Dies Irae for the horror of it: “You and your team of archaeologists
have fallen into the "catacombs of the zombies" reads the manual.10

Figure 9. Entombed (US Games, 1982)11

Seven of the fourteen games containing minor seconds were ports from arcade
versions, so I checked the original soundtracks, four of which contained flat
seconds, and three of which did not. Kangaroo, Super Cobra, Crystal Castles
and Burger Time were all fairly comparable versions, although a few notes were
swapped (likely due to the VCS’ tunings). The basslines were generally abandoned,
as the chances of finding both compatible lead and bass voices on the TIA chip
would be minimal.

Three other covers, Qbert, Crazy Climber, and especially Up n’ Down had a noticeably
different flavour to the tunes, due, apparently, to the limitations of the Atari
soundchip.

Figure 12. Qbert – Arcade Version (D. Gottlieb and CO. 1982)

Figure 13. Qbert – Atari VCS Version (Parker Bros/Atari 1983)

Up n’ down in particular suggests the Atari’s tunings may have had a significant
role to play in the prominence of flat seconds, as the tune changes from a bluesy
F# minor groove to an almost psychotic sounding version based in C minor.

Figure 14. Up N Down - Arcade Version (Sega 1983)

Figure 15. Up N Down - Atari VCS Version (Sega 1983)

It seems fair to say, then, that the prominence of minor seconds is to a large
extent dependent on the tuning limitations of the TIA soundchip. But this still
fails to explain why the other four arcade songs originally contained minor
seconds, at a time when these were uncommon in Western music, and most of the
games companies in this early period were US American. Could it be that, since
most composers at the time were programmers rather than musicians, they just
didn’t “know any better”? Or could it be that by the time these games came out—
1982 and 1983— the Atari aesthetic had already been absorbed into game programmers’
consciousness?

CONCLUSIONS

The Atari aesthetic is still going strong, as “micro musicians” have worked
out how to record and play songs through the old VCS. In 2000, the band Golden
Shower won “Best Electronic Music Video at the MTV Brazil Video Music Awards,
for their video for a song called ‘Video Computer System’, written using entirely
Atari VCS game sounds.12 But is the Atari responsible for a much larger shift
in tonal sensibilities in the 1980s?

Philip Tagg suggests

“… European and North American techno-rave seems to go in a big way for the
aeolian and phrygian modes, not as harmonic padding for blues pentatonicism,
but as straight sets of minor mode triads or bare fifths without much trace
of a seventh, let alone ninth, eleventh or thirteenth.”

And asks,

“Why phrygian? Have British rave musicians taken a stand for the new-age travellers
and gypsies? Have European and North American bedroom boffins started to support
the pan- Islamic movement or is the phrygian thing a musical 'up yours' to the
powers that sent the Nintendo missile through the Iraqi bomb silo window and
smashed the lives of thousands of civilians in Baghdad, i.e. the same powers
that condemn half the rave-going youngsters to unemployment? Or has everyone
been listening to raj music? Or is the phrygian mode just new and different?
If so, why that particular difference and not another? What about the lydian
mode? It's just as rare in pop as the phrygian.”

Tagg uses a few examples of Euro House— BMQ’s ‘Mastermind’ and Capella’s ‘U
Got 2 Know’ (both 1993, but the Capella melody is based on the Siouxie & The
Banshees ‘Happy House’ of 1980) to illustrate his point, and there are certainly
many house and techno tunes using the flat second, particularly those using
an E tonic. Heavy metal and industrial songs in the 1980s and early 1990s likewise
ended up frequently using flat seconds (see Collins 2002).

While the prominence of flat seconds in electronic music could be down to any
or all of Tagg’s suggestions, or could have something to do with the setup of
programming in tracker sequencers, could it also be that the acceptance of this
modal element— particularly in genres that were based on synthesizer music,
such as techno, house, and industrial— was influenced by the hearing of Atari
VCS songs hundreds of times over in the formative years of these musicians and
their fans?